Eagletarian Blog

Reporters remain fascinated by the Eagles' hurry-up offensive style under new coach Chip Kelly. The idea is to confuse the defense, of course, and limit its ability to adjust. But both sides are being time-squeezed; the potential exists for the offense to be confused, or not be able to adjust to say, a different blitz look than it expected.

Center Jason Kelce talked about this earlier in the week: “If we’re trying to push the tempo, all of a sudden I’m trying to change the protection while the quarterback’s giving the cadence, because he’s trying to go as fast as HE can, the backs don’t get it, or the tight ends don’t get it – that’s the biggest thing. If we’re going to be wrong, we’d rather all be wrong, 11 people on the same page, then have the quarterback use his hot read to beat the blitz that we didn’t pick up ... When everyone’s doing the same thing, it tends to work out better.”

Wideout Jason Avant said the same thing a slightly different way: "If everyone does the wrong thing at the right time, it'll still work."

What you don't want is half the team trying to do one thing and half trying to do something else, which seems likely to happen at least in the early going, as the Eagles adapt to Kelly's way of doing things.

***

Jason Kelce also discussed the progress of first-round rookie Lane Johnson, whom draft experts liked for his potential, not his polish. Johnson is a former quarterback who bounced around several positions before playing his final two seasons at Oklahoma as an offensive tackle.

Kelce said Johnson “looks pretty much like every other rookie. You see all the potential there, you see all the things you want to see out of a rookie, but he’s still learning the offense, he’s still learning the techniques, and on top of that, whenever you’re thrust into a new situation, mentally, he’s still trying to get everything down.

"Are his techniques behind for what we’re doing here? Yeah, but everyone else here has had multiple offensive line coaches, so they’re used to a lot of different techniques. Also, we had a little warmup (April minicamp) before he even got here … He’s making progress. He’s doing really well for a rookie.”